All About Sculpture

Sculpture is created to make an impact in the area within which it is placed. Sculpture can be inspiring, moving, energising and even terrifying, although the sculpture we have at Bluestone Gallery is always beautiful, we hope!

Sculptural art is as old as cave drawings. Mankind has always felt the desire to create three dimensional art, ever since we evolved the tools and skills to do so.

Like most disciplines of art, sculpture can be created in many different ways. Early sculpture was almost entirely created by carving or modelling in clay and wood, but since Modernism sculpture has enjoyed an almost complete freedom in terms of process used to create art forms and the materials from which the art form is created.

Now, sculptures can be created by carving, welding, modelling, be moulded or cast. As a result, sculpture is a really dynamic and exciting form of artistic expression.

Sculpture is primarily known as a free-standing object, such as a statue. However, sculptures can also include reliefs, art attached either completely or partially to a surface, often integral to the other art piece. The depth by which a relief projects from the base, classifies is as low or bas-relief, mid-relief or high relief. You also can have ‘sunk-relief’ whereby the artwork is removed from the panel, background or plinth.

Sculpture also benefits from the ability for multiple copies of art to be repeat cast from moulds created from the original art work. This means that sometimes it is possible for a sculptural artwork to have a limited run of numbered copies, such as 12, in much the same as a artists might do with a limited numbered run of numbered signed prints of paintings.

We hope you enjoy browsing our online of sculpture. Please don’t hesitate to drop us a line if there is something specific that you are interested in trying to find.